Al-Qaeda offers deal to release British hostage in return for Abu Qatada's freedom

Al-Qaeda has offered to release a British banker kidnapped while on holiday in
west Africa if the Government allows the radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada
to leave Britain for a country of his choosing.

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Stephen McGown, right, and two other hostages are paraded by the terroristsPhoto: REUTERS

Stephen McGown, 37, was seized last November with a Swedish and a Dutch national from a restaurant in Timbuktu, Mali. A German was killed in the struggle.

A banker who had spent several years in Britain, Mr McGown is thought to have been on a motorcycle tour through Europe and Africa before settling with his wife in South Africa, where his parents lived and he held dual nationality.

He is understood to be one of nine Europeans seized by al-Qaeda operatives in the restive West African countries of Mali and Niger since September 2010.

On Monday, an unverified statement – referring to Mr McGown by his middle name of Malcolm – appeared on an Islamic website.

It said he would be released if Abu Qatada was sent to an "Arab Spring country" rather than to Jordan, where he faces imprisonment over terrorist charges.

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The statement, picked up by the American monitoring service SITE, was attributed to al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which grew out of Islamic groups fighting the Algerian government in the 1990s.

"The initiative to the British Government is to release its citizen Stephen Malcolm, who also has South African nationality, if it deports Abu Qatada to one of the ‘Arab Spring’ countries," the statement read. "If Britain ignores this offer it will bear the consequences of handing Abu Qatada to the Jordanian government."

The statement came days after al–Qaeda said it would "open the gates of evil" on Britain if Mr Qatada was sent to Jordan. He has been described by a judge as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe and has been fighting British attempts to deport him for 10 years. He is currently being held in the high-security Belmarsh prison in south-east London.

Recently his lawyers appealed to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in a last-ditch attempt to block his deportation. If the appeal is allowed, the radical cleric could once again be released on bail.

Mr McGown was born and raised in South Africa but electoral roll records show that he and his wife, Catherine, 32, lived in a private development in Putney, west London, between 2007 and 2009. He is thought to have worked for the South African bank Investec in its London branch.

His mother Beverley told The Daily Telegraph that the family had had no contact from those who were holding him, four months after he was captured. "We’ve heard not a word, absolutely nothing," she said.

She said that they heard of the latest statement from news reports in Britain. "In general we have had very little information and it’s obviously quite traumatic for all of us," she said.

Speaking to a South African radio station shortly after his son was seized, his father, Malcolm McGown, said the bike trip was to be his "final adventure".

He added that to that point, he had not heard from the kidnappers about a ransom. "We heard that the families of the other men were contacted, but there has been absolutely no contact with us yet," he said.

Mr McGown was riding a Yamaha XT600E motorbike across Africa with a Dutch friend when he was seized.

The northern part of Mali in the vast Sahel region has been under the control of Islamists, including AQIM and Ansar Dine, as well as separatist Tuareg rebels, for more than a month.

The insurgents took advantage of the power vacuum created by a March 22 army coup in the capital Bamako in the country’s south, and the fabled desert city of Timbuktu is now in their hands.